


It's All Right WIth Me

by Blake



Series: Cole Porter 30-day challenge [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Minor Luke Skywalker/Han Solo, Past Lando Calrissian/Han Solo, canon shmanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Instead of doing anything, Lando keeps talking. “If I win,” he says, scraping his thumb across his full lower lip. “I get a kiss.”
Relationships: Lando Calrissian/Luke Skywalker
Series: Cole Porter 30-day challenge [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610263
Kudos: 25





	It's All Right WIth Me

“Your boyfriend won this ship from me playing this game, you know.” Lando’s eyes are soft and warm over the top of his Sabacc cards, the suggestion of a sympathetic smile. There’s a lot to be somber about: Luke’s injury, which he can’t even look at without bile rising in his throat; the troublesome search for a friendly medical facility; Chewie’s silent, constant occupation of the cockpit; Leia’s fatigue from keeping guilty vigil over Luke, waiting for him to talk about things he’s not anywhere near ready to talk about; and Lando’s gentle, awkward attempts to be helpful, resulting in this quiet, one-handed, bed-ridden card game between people who were only brought together by the man whose absence is weighing on them all like a heavy, suffocating mist.

But there are more reasons to be somber than Lando knows about. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Luke picks a random card from the pile he’s keeping face-down on his chest and drops it on the blanket between them. He feels a flicker of surprise when it’s the card he’d absently hoped it was. He doesn’t feel very much like the force is with him. Maybe he’s just lucky with cards. He taps the deck to raise his bet.

“Oh.” Lando sounds genuinely surprised, and he’s looking at Luke, not at the card he just played. “I’m sorry, I thought… I mean I know he and Leia… But I assumed...” Now he sounds genuinely apologetic. From all that Han ever mentioned about the shameless flirt Lando Calrissian, Luke wasn’t expecting him to sound so _genuine_ all the time. Maybe having your friend frozen in carbon and sold to an evil crimelord alters the psyche.

Luke finds his throat dry when he tries to swallow. Lando’s cards are lowered, his face open and readable. This is a man who just gave up a whole successful life he had built for himself, all just to help some old friends and his old friends’ friends. Luke feels words swell up behind his tongue, at the floodgates. He feels like he can tell this familiar stranger things that he can’t tell Leia.

In the quiet moment, Lando eventually plays a card. A good card. Luke finds himself smiling, charmed. In a galaxy where greed and oppression are disguised as being for the greater good, he’s attracted to those who hide their kindness behind ruthless card games. “We were.”

“You and Han and Leia?” Lando asks, talking like he’s walking on eggshells, drawing another card.

“No.” The word comes out almost like a laugh. “Me and Han.”

Lando sits back in his chair, stroking his manicured nails over his chin, _listening_. It suddenly strikes Luke as preposterous that he has been trying to train with Yoda and face Darth Vader—his _father_ —and move forward in his destiny and he hasn’t even stopped for a moment to talk to _anybody_ about how heartbroken he is. He hasn’t been trying to trust his feelings; he’s been trying to _run away_ from them.

And now that a handsome con artist in a cape wants to listen, he feels like he can talk. “It was… _great_. For two years, it was… It was _everything_. And then…” Luke picks another card and drops it, futilely watching Lando’s eyes for reactions. “I don’t know what happened.”

Lando exhales loudly and leans forward, placing an elbow on Luke’s cot and resting his jaw on his fist. Luke finds himself smiling again. “He cheated on you? With…” He nods his head subtly toward the other room, where Leia is catching some much-overdue sleep. Blessed, wonderful Leia. Luke didn’t have the heart to be anything less than supportive to her, to promise her she didn’t hurt him, to assure her it was over between him and Han even though he was never really ready for it to be.

“No, not exactly.” Luke shifts to a more horizontal position, relieving the pressure in his lower back and bringing his eyes level with Lando’s.

“Still broke your heart, though,” Lando observes with a flickering hand gesture.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Luke looks down at the cards that have been played. It’s so much easier to play games and talk objectively and distantly about heartbreak than it is to consider the prospect of never getting to see him again, or to imagine what he’ll feel if he does.

“I’ve been in your shoes, you know.”

Luke has vague suspicions of what that could mean, but Han has always been cagey on the topic. He watches for any sort of tell while Lando draws another card, but he’s a damn smooth card player. “You’ve had your hand cut off?”

Lando’s laugh is a low, musical hum that makes Luke feel warm and safe. “No. I guess I mean I’ve been in Han’s bed, and got out with a few scrapes.”

Luke refrains from apologizing for not knowing, because Lando seems like the kind of person who is far more interested in commiseration than pity. “Han never said. Always made it seem like your whole _thing_ was about the Falcon.”

Lando grins at that, pleased by the mention of the ship he is once again captaining. “Our baby. Yes. Well, that’s probably because he’s an insecure son of a bitch. He _would_ think the Falcon is the only thing I loved enough to miss.”

“He’s more loveable than he knows what to do with.”

Their eyes meet across the messy field of cards, a spark of something between them. Then Lando’s smile takes on a familiar, feral edge, reminding Luke that this man has known Han for so much longer than he has, long enough to have shaped him. It’s comforting, and freeing. “Are you gonna raise your bet?” Luke asks.

“I’m out of money,” Lando lies.

There’s a pleasant tug in Luke’s stomach, hunger and thirst, longing and the feeling of being wanted. He keeps his eyes on Lando’s and doesn’t say a word.

Instead of doing anything, Lando keeps talking. “If I win,” he says, scraping his thumb across his full lower lip. “I get a kiss.”

Luke keeps his face expressionless, fighting down his urge to smile and bat his lashes and forget the galaxy and its contradictory morals. “That’s not raising your bet, that’s raising mine,” he observes, coyly playing the role of someone who cares about winning. “What do I get if I win?”

“Well, then I suppose _you_ get a kiss,” Lando says, his tongue poking the side of his cheek. Maybe that’s as close to a tell as he gets. He’s pleased with himself. Luke thinks it’s pretty attractive.

Luke upturns the rest of his cards. Without looking at them, he knows they’re a winning hand, but before he even realizes he’s doing it, he’s cloaking them with the force, disguising them as the worst cards imaginable. It’s different, somehow, letting Lando win the kiss than winning it himself.

With a well-practiced flourish, Lando lays his own cards down on top of Luke’s with the confidence of someone who knows he has won.

It’s nice to laugh, even as charged and subdued as their laughter is. Luke props himself on his good arm and watches Lando stand to come close and level. He feels a swell of arousal and just lets it happen, not questioning whether it has to do with the promise of kissing someone that has kissed the man he’s in love with, or the feeling of selling himself over a card game, or the glorious absence of right or wrong in this moment, or simply the presence of an attractive man close to feel the heat of and looking at him like he’s more than his heartbreak.

The kiss startles Luke, the hum of his surprised moan vibrating in the heat between their mouths. Lando’s lips are softer than Han’s, but drier, gentler, and surer. Luke presses into it, seeking more sensation, tasting and smelling this new person’s breath. It isn’t until he touches his tongue to Lando’s teeth and Lando laughs wetly against him that Luke realizes he’s kissing the second person he’s ever kissed. He learned how to kiss around Han’s tongue, under Han’s hungry, sucking lips, and he’s never known anything else. He could be objectively terrible at kissing, completely unskilled, and he would have never known it until this moment.

But Lando doesn’t seem too put off, and Luke’s not coherent enough to be actually insecure about anything so silly. Following the steep, curling drops of heat in his stomach, Luke lowers himself onto his elbow, and then onto his back, drawing Lando with him, letting Lando kiss him, letting Lando guide him into slow, steady, kisses that aren’t so much lazy as much as they’re confident, full of faith in what’s to come, too in-the-moment to be stressed about making it happen sooner.

Luke is turned on, but he also feels genuinely tired and ready to sleep for the first time in days. Lando breaks away with a whisper-soft kiss to his cheek. “That good, huh?” he asks, a sweet note of self-mockery in the tender rumble of his voice.

Luke shakes his head, laughter breaking through the edges of his breath. “Amazing, actually.” He looks into the dark brown depths of Lando’s eyes, mapping out the edges of his pupils, wondering at the mystery of a man who isn’t Han. Tentatively, Luke reaches up to brush the backs of his knuckles across the smooth-shaven edges of Lando’s jaw. “You’re very charming,” he accuses. “And soothing.”

Lando’s smile might be self-deprecating, but he’s clearly pretty smug all the same as he stands upright, slowly pulling free from Luke’s touch. He holds Luke’s hands between his palms, terribly charming. “Maybe we’ll meet for a rematch sometime.”

Luke lets his eyes fall shut and smirks up at the shadow standing over him. “Maybe I’ll raise the stakes,” he mumbles, feeling sleep come for him as his hand is dropped carefully onto his chest and placed over his heart.


End file.
